Welcome remarks
I welcome you today to celebrate Elizabeth Wenscott’s life. All over this garden, you see pieces of that life. There’s the stunning garden itself that she and Lisa created and lived in each summer. When I met Lisa, 33 years ago, I don’t remember so much as a potted plant in her apartment and yet together, they created this, as they always did, in community, this time with their next door neighbors, the Millers. This yard became a certified wildlife habitat with resident possum, the usual rabbits, birds and squirrels, a hawk and an owl, and for years Elizabeth and Lisa were biodynamic beekeepers, that undertaking in the name of a fallen friend and in response to the honeybee crisis. Elizabeth insisted on the certification so that it could become a replicable model. She saw herself as a teacher in everything, sometimes to the annoyance of all of you. The beekeeping was a typical collaboration between them. Many of you will recognize the fuck you/no fuck you style of their partnership. This, to these two tough cookies, was affection. And it worked. Interestingly, it brought the softness out in the other.
The beekeeping was started by Lisa. She strong armed E into it claiming a right to it as her own pet project because E had so many of her own. She leaned on E to take the ball and run with it, refine it, until these two, became experts in failed hives. At the end, you really didn't know whose project it had been in the first place.
And here’s another story.
Lisa and Elizabeth invited the neighborhood in for a class each fall for the last four years, on biodynamic yard care, the gold standard of organic gardening, that they learned from the local organic farm they support. The class was about compost building, soil replenishment, and tree poultices. That horse chestnut over there was a 100-year-old dying tree whose roots were destroying the garage floor. To build a new garage would have killed the tree, they instead decided to save the tree and live with an ailing garage. They researched saving trees and found an obscure solution from their teachings at the farm. Without going into much more detail, suffice it to say that that participants had to rub a biodynamic paste, whose ingredients included dried cow dung…cow poop…all over the tree. Not surprisingly, no one came the first year, it was too weird, but by the fourth year it had a following. Because the tree thrived. Many people wouldn't choose a tree and live with a broken down garage. But Lisa and Elizabeth did and you see over there in the back by the patio a 100-year-old horse chestnut tree that provides a canopy of shade for the entire backyard. Not only is the tree thriving; the participants have a great story. The garage continues to crumble.
Back to what you see here today. You saw the Tai Chi students from the school, now friends, doing their forms in the yard before the service started. In this martial arts tradition of Tai Chi, you see oranges and barley tea on a table. At the school, it is served halfway through the Tai Chi/martial arts seminars to hydrate and provide a bit of nourishment but also keep students light for the second half of a physically demanding seminar. Today it is an offering for you, as Elizabeth would want it to be. You just heard the deep throaty gong that she selected from its maker in Taiwan. There with her students for a competition, she dragged them onto a side trip to the gong maker, selected one of the biggest gongs and hand carried it back to the States herself. Elizabeth also built the frame herself and researched more in order to choose the correct rope and mallet, all done to honor the gong and capture its sweetest and best sound.
I knew that Elizabeth was multi-faceted and accomplished but I did not know many of the details until these weeks as we all gathered. I asked Lisa in the last few days if she ever did anything pedestrian like watch tv. I was relieved by her “fuck yeah, she was hopeless. She even watched The Voice and powwowed with her friend Kay about each episode.” With all her achievements, I admit to feeling better when I knew that Elizabeth was also deeply human.
And you, the people in her life, are here in this garden, too. First those whom she called her heart: Emi and Chloe, her two beautiful stepdaughters, about whom Elizabeth would kvell, the Yiddish word for bursting with pride. She felt that kvelling pride daily, and would tell anyone who would listen all about them – that they were kind, smart and accomplished.
Her teachers and students are here, who are also her friends, ultimately became her caretakers. There are the people who brought this extraordinary woman into the world, Judy and Dean, sailors, who instilled in her her love of sailing and nature. There are her neighbors, the environmentalists – the seed savers, the bird watchers, the prairie restorationists, the community vegetable gardeners, the garden walkers, to name a few. Even her roommate from college, Mary Tallman, is here and she’ll play bagpipes at the end of this service. There’s Lisa’s family, who became Elizabeth’s family, too. And then there’s Elizabeth’s beloved Lisa.
We’ll only begin today to tell stories today about Elizabeth’s life and the stories will continue to be told down through the years to inform, educate, provide inspiration and, of course, entertain, as people look to find meaning in their own lives.
Rob Wittig, a student of hers for 18 years, will now offer the Eulogy, before we hear from our other speakers.
No comments:
Post a Comment